The 1929 Palestine riots, Buraq Uprising (Arabic: ثورة البراق, Thawrat al-Burāq) or the Events of 1929 (Hebrew: מאורעות תרפ"ט, Meora'ot Tarpat, lit.

Events of 5689 Anno Mundi), was a series of demonstrations and riots in late August 1929 in which a longstanding dispute between Palestinian Arabs and Jews over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem escalated into violence, which also involved the British authorities.

[6] Avraham Sela described the riots as "unprecedented in the history of the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine, in duration, geographical scope and direct damage to life and property".

[12] As a result of an incident that occurred in September 1925, a ruling was made which forbade the Jews to bring seats and benches to the Wall even though these were intended for worshippers who were aged and infirm.

[11] Several months earlier Zionist leader Menachem Ussishkin gave a speech demanding "a Jewish state without compromises and without concessions, from Dan to Be'er Sheva, from the great sea to the desert, including Transjordan."

He concluded, "Let us swear that the Jewish people will not rest and will not remain silent until its national home is built on our Mt Moriah," a reference to the Temple Mount.

[11] In September 1928, Jews praying at the Wall on Yom Kippur placed a mechitza that looked like a simple room divider of cloth covering a few wooden frames to separate the men and women.

The sheikhs hosting the commissioner immediately protested the screen on the grounds that it violated the Ottoman status quo forbidding Jews from bringing physical structures, even temporary furniture, into the area due to Muslim fears of Zionist expropriation of the site.

The constable had infuriated his superiors due to his use of excessive force without good judgement, but the British government later issued a statement defending his actions.

[11] Rabbi Aaron Menachem Mendel Guterman (1860-1934), the third rebbe of the Radzymin Hasidic dynasty, while visiting Jerusalem from Poland, is described as being the person responsible for erecting the canvas screen that became the center of the 1928 incident.

In addition, it stated that "there appeared in the Arabic Press a number of articles, which, had they been published in England or in other western countries, would unquestionably have been regarded as provocative.

On 14 August the Haganah and Brit Trumpeldor held a meeting in Tel Aviv attended by 6,000 people objecting to 1928 Commission's conclusion that the Wall was Muslim property.

[11] The group included members of Vladimir Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism movement Betar youth organization, under the leadership of Jeremiah Halpern.

[32] Leaders of the Palestine Zionist Executive were reportedly alarmed by the activities of the Revisionists as well as "embarrassed" and fearful of an "accident" and had notified the authorities of the march in advance,[25] who provided a heavy police escort in a bid to prevent any incidents.

[11][33][34] Inflammatory articles calculated to incite disorder started to appear in the Arab media and one flyer, signed by "the Committee of the Holy Warriors in Palestine" stated that the Jews had violated the honor of Islam, and declared: "Hearts are in tumult because of these barbaric deeds, and the people began to break out in shouts of 'war, Jihad ...

"[23][33] On the same afternoon, the Jewish newspaper Doar HaYom – of which Jabotinsky was the editor – published an inflammatory leaflet describing the Muslim march, based partially on statements by Wolfgang von Weisl, which "in material particulars was incorrect" according to the Shaw Report.

"[35] The next day an incident which "in its origin was of a personal nature" was sparked when a 17-year-old Sephardic Jew named Abraham Mizrachi was fatally stabbed by an Arab at the Maccabi grounds near Mea Shearim and the Bukharim quarter, on the outskirts of the village lands of Lifta, following a quarrel which began when he and his friends tried to retrieve their lost football from an Arab girl after it had rolled into an Arab-owned tomato field.

A late-night meeting initiated the following day by the Jewish leadership, at which acting high commissioner Harry Luke, Jamal al-Husayni, and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi were present, failed to produce a call for an end to the violence.

[40]The next Friday, 23 August, thousands of Arab villagers streamed into Jerusalem from the surrounding countryside to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, many armed with sticks and knives.

Luke telephoned the Mufti to come and calm a mob that had gathered under his window near the Damascus Gate, but the commissioner's impression was that the religious leader's presence was having the opposite effect.

"[60] The lone British policeman in the town, Raymond Cafferata, who, "killed as many of the murderers as he could, taking to his fists even," was overwhelmed, and the reinforcements he called for did not arrive for 5 hours–leading to severe recriminations.

Hundreds of Jews were saved by Arab neighbours who offered them sanctuary from the mob by hiding them in their own houses[61] while others survived by taking refuge in the British police station at Beit Romano on the outskirts of the city.

More than 70 Jews, including the Yeshiva students, sought refuge in the house of Eliezer Dan Slonim, the son of the Rabbi of Hebron, but were massacred by an Arab mob.

[3] On the 25 August, reports stated that a group of Jews accompanied by a Jewish policeman, later asserted to be Simha Hinkis on the government payroll, attacked the home of Sheikh ‘Abd al-Chani ‘Awn (50), the imam of the neighbourhood mosque.

A subsequent investigation stated 5 adults had been killed, but no children died: a five year old child had been shot, and a two-month old baby had been struck on the ear, temple and cheek with a blunt instrument.

The pogrom began on the afternoon of Thursday, August 29, and was carried out by Arabs from Safed and from the nearby villages, armed with weapons and tins of kerosene.

Advancing on the street of the Sefardi Jews from Kfar Meron and Ein Zeitim, they looted and set fire to houses, urging each other on to continue with the killing.

Yitshak Mammon, a native of Safed who lived with an Arab family, was murdered with indescribable brutality: he was stabbed again and again, until his body became a bloody sieve, and then he was trampled to death.

[74]A Scottish missionary working in Safed at the time stated: On Saturday August 24, there was a demonstration of Moslems along the road past the mission property.

They came beating drums and breaking the windows of Jewish houses en route...On the afternoon of Thursday the 29th... one of our church members came running to tell us that "all the Jews were being killed."